Royal Ballet’s Lauren Cuthbertson: Nothing is insurmountable

Lauren Cuthbertson photographed exclusively for Metro at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden (Picture: Daniel Lynch)

When Royal Ballet principal Lauren Cuthbertson takes the stage tonight in the company’s new full-length Shakespeare adaptation, The Winter’s Tale, it will mark the latest triumph in a remarkable career.

Not just because it will see her playing another role created around her – the dream of every professional ballet dancer – but also because it’s something of a miracle she’s dancing at all.

Not once but twice, Cuthbertson has been stopped in her tracks – first by illness, then by injury – and left with a daunting climb back to basic fitness, let alone world-class dancing levels.

‘But I did it,’ she grins, restlessly rapping the table for emphasis. ‘It’s taught me nothing’s insurmountable. You can keep going and it’s only yourself that puts the lid on what you can achieve.

‘There’s this line from The Winter’s Tale I’ve discovered that, if I’d known it before, I think would have helped. “I must be patient until the heavens look with an aspect more favourable.” Isn’t that a quote to hold on to?’

Cuthbertson has found inspiration in Shakespeare’s complex late play in more ways than one since choreographer Christopher Wheeldon chose her to be his Hermione, the wronged queen of the tale.

‘I have a new saying: “What would Hermione do?”’ she laughs. ‘I didn’t know the play before and I found it incredibly hard to read,’ she winces, as though admitting a terrible failing. ‘I then fell in love with it. Hermione is like an icon for women: strong, honest, proud, but not in an unattractive way, and full of dignity.’

At 29, Cuthbertson seems young to be taking on Hermione – a woman who becomes the innocent victim of her husband’s jealous rage, loses her children and is possibly turned to stone, before bestowing forgiveness on those who wronged her. ‘But I feel like I really understand her,’ she says. ‘I’m ready for this role.’

This butcher’s daughter from Torquay has displayed a rare mental strength herself. A product of the Royal Ballet schooling system, having started classes aged three and become an RB junior associate aged eight, Cuthbertson joined the company in 2002 and by 2008 was its youngest principal.

Darcey Bussell had retired the year before. It was hoped Cuthbertson, then (and still) its only English principal ballerina, would take her place.

But in 2009, glandular fever and post-viral fatigue took her off stage for 18 months. ‘I had to start from scratch,’ she says. ‘The virus hit my hips – they don’t move like a ballet dancer’s any more. It took nine months to put my leg up anywhere near like a dancer.’

In the middle of all this, though, Wheeldon came calling. He wanted her as his lead for Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, the RB’s first original full-length ballet in 16 years.

‘We had to start really gently,’ says Cuthbertson, who glows when talking about the man who has gone on to make her something of his muse. ‘That’s true but there’s nothing contrived about it,’ she says. ‘He never makes me feel too special.’

Buoyed by her return in Alice, Cuthbertson ignored an ankle problem that soon required increasing cortisone injections. The situation got worse when surgery she underwent in 2012 was ‘misdiagnosed’ and she resumed training on an ankle that wasn’t healing. More surgery followed but the damage was severe.

The thing I learned from that was my surgeon’s phrase: “You can’t cheat biology.” So I just had to wait it out,’ says Cuthbertson. It was another 18 months off stage. Being ‘a bit loopy’, as she puts it, might have helped her.

‘In ballet school, I could always see the funny side of things, so I survived and came out grinning,’ she says.

She’s returned for Wheeldon’s latest major project – the Royal’s first full-length Shakespeare adaptation since Kenneth Macmillan’s Romeo And Juliet in 1965.

‘It’s the same team as for Alice,’ says Cuthbertson. ‘It feels exciting, like, where can we go next?’

Her setbacks have changed her, she says, and given her ‘a massive sense of perspective – younger dancers come to me and people write to me; there are things people struggle with that I understand and connect with’.

One thing that hasn’t changed is Cuthbertson’s ritual of having a perfume made for each new character.

‘I’m going to have three scents for Hermione: her natural state; something for the trial scene; then definitely for the statue,’ she says. ‘Anastasia [Brezler, the perfumer] is wonderfully creative. Dance partners do comment on it. Some people think it’s silly – but I don’t care!’

The Winter’s Tale premieres tonight and is in rep at London’s Royal Opera House until May 8. The production will be broadcast in cinemas across Britain on April 28. www.roh.org.uk